the Black Marble (1977) Read online

  Then he began to smell the dog shit. The animals were nervous too, and the excrement was runny. Wonder what his own would smell like now? Lucky he hadn't eaten for a day and a half.

  This was his last dog show, could that be part of it? The last contact with a way of life that hadn't been bad to him. If the truth be known, he loved dogs. Had always loved them, even as an urchin in a Tucson foster home where they ate pinto beans three times a day in the Depression. Even the stray dogs he secretly fed would eat the beans.

  From dog shit to the fragrance of roses: white and red and yellow as buttercups. He loved the Santa Barbara Dog Show best. The flowers and grass and gentle loveliness. It reminded him of movies he'd seen. Like the Ascot Races in My Fair Lady. He used to dream of marrying a rich exhibitor and showing her terriers at the Santa Barbara show. Wearing a powder-blue blazer and white pants. Sipping from demitasse china. "Mr. Skinner.''

  "Huh?"

  "Uh, Mr. Skinner, shouldn't we be setting up? I mean, we don't have that much time, do we?"

  Jesus Christ, she at least could have washed the fucking lint out of her hair!

  "Okay," he said, stepping on the cigarette. "Let's go to work and win a few points, Pattie Mae."

  Madeline Whitfield glanced at the gangling dog handler with the crazed eyes who babbled ceaselessly to a nervous young girl grooming a Kerry blue. But her eyes passed over them as she strolled around the arena floor, trying to walk off the tension. Many dog exhibitors never saw their animals except at dog shows like these. They spent perhaps thousands of dollars on them and never saw them, because it was infinitely easier to win if the dogs stayed in the kennel with the handlers.

  Madeline Whitfield of course was not that kind of dog owner. Not that she wanted to win less-in fact, she was searching for her favorite photographer, prepared to pay anything to get Vickie's photograph in one of a hundred dog magazines-she just didn't like to think of dogs living in a kennel like foster children.

  Vickie had the love and care of a real child, and so far it hadn't harmed her chances to win. Madeline was proving that love and maternal care could compensate for the discipline of a kennel-reared champion.

  Pattie Mae now had the cowering little whippet on the grooming table. His tail, curled between his legs against his stomach, looked from the side like a second penis. He was so delicate his legs were like fingers. The noose around the trembling animal's neck, attached to the metal arm on the grooming post, was perhaps the only thing keeping him from leaping off the steel table and running through the arena and out the open door. Which of course was what Philo Skinner felt like doing. His voice, almost drowned out by the noises around him, was pitched higher by the fear that possessed him.

  "Squirrelly dog, Pattie Mae, that's a squirrelly goddamn dog."

  "Yes, Mr. Skinner, I'll just starch his forelegs and ..."

  "Squirrelly! Just like his goddamn owner. I never shoulda said I'd bring him today. I should stick to terriers. He's six months away, training-wise. Look at him cringe. Jesus Christ! Put that dog back in the crate. He's got head trouble. Trouble in his goddamn head. Look at his eyes, Pattie Mae! Look at his eyes!"

  But the girl couldn't help looking at Philo Skinner's eyes. They were the same as the whippet's: round, dilated, darting. Shit! The old fart was as scared as the poor little dog. And he smelled. Oh, gross! He smelted!

  By 8:00 a. M. they'd already started judging the basset hounds in ring number one. The handlers and the low-slung little dogs were queued up tensely as Philo Skinner blundered past in a rush for the men's room. He had suddenly felt as though he'd been given an enema. He wasn't sure he'd make it. He realized he was going the wrong way, turned, and began a lanky loping dash toward the west rest room. He barely made the toilet in time to pass a pathetic little bubble which was all he had in him.

  "Get me through the day!" Philo whispered to the god of gamblers and dog handlers. I've been decent to animals all my life! It's got to count for something! Jesus, no one could care for as many helpless unloved dogs as I have and not get one break in life. Gimme a break! Philo prayed in that canine cathedral that Sunday morning.

  He was so frazzled and numb that when he left the rest room he actually bumped right into a grooming table and was staring eye to eye with an oversized standard poodle done in a continental clip. The enormous lion-colored mane and clipped hindquarters made him resemble a baboon. Philo Skinner was disoriented and giddy and felt for an insane moment that he was face to face with a yawning baboon. He tried to get hold of himself when the looming poodle roared in his face, but it was too late. He barely made it back to the toilet to squeeze yet another bubble past his inflamed and screaming hemorrhoids.

  By the time Philo Skinner had returned to his grooming area, Pattie Mae had things pretty much under control. She had lost the daisy from her hair and the front of her see- through cotton blouse was covered with dog hair. But she was flush and beaming from the thrill of working her first show.

  "Mr. Skinner!" she said when he arrived, looking wan and bleary eyed.

  "Yeah, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing!" she said, dabbing a little chalk on the beard of the drooling Dandie Dinmont. "It's just that I heard some handlers talking, and did you know that terriers have won three out of the last five Beverly Hills Winter Shows?"

  "So what," Philo said, staring at the Dandie like he'd never seen him before.

  "Well, jeez, it just shows how popular terriers are with the judges and everybody. I'm so glad I came to work for a kennel that mostly handles terriers and ..."

  "Got a lot a time, Pattie Mae," he said. "Dandies don't show for a while."

  "Which ring?"

  "Number eight."

  It was amazing, he thought, how even now he could rattle off the data of his trade. He could hardly remember his telephone number at the moment, but he knew which ring each terrier breed would appeal* in and at what time. He was a dog man, for sure. He wondered absently if he'd miss this work just a little bit. He saw the whippet cowering in the comer of the exercise pen. He felt the obsessive need to talk.

  "Got to match that dog, Pattie Mae. Match him if I decide to show him."

  "Huh?"

  "Stick a match up his ass!" he said testily.

  "Oh, what for?"

  "Jesus Christ, Pattie Mae, look at him! Do you want him to take a shit while I'm showing him in the goddamn ring?"

  "How does a match make him ..."

  "Wouldn't you want to get rid of a match in your ass? Goddamnit, Pattie Mae, sometimes I think you're an idiot!"

  But Philo's chastisement of his groomer was interrupted by a panting dog owner from Palo Alto, who was scurrying from one grooming table to the next, eyes more wild and demented than Philo Skinner's. She was over sixty years old, weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, had a sable fur slung around her red splotchy neck, and wore a flowered hat which was tilted over her nose as she ran. Her voice had risen to a screech when she stopped before Pattie Mae and grabbed the girl desperately by the arm. She held a bichon frise in her arms. Philo Skinner s expert eye spotted the tiny red spot of menstrual flow under the plumy white tail of the little bitch but Pattie Mae hadn't the faintest idea what was wrong when the puffing woman cried: "Honey, I need help desperately! Do you have a Tampax! Anybody! DOES ANYBODY HAVE A TAMPAX!"

  Even before the astonished girl had a chance to reply, the mistress of the bichon frise was off and running again.

  "My gosh," Pattie Mae said to Philo Skinner. "A lady her age? Does she still ..."

  "Never mind, Pattie Mae, never mind. Let's move on to the Kerry blue," Philo said, shaking his head.

  And so, with her plumy bottom pointed to the dome of the cathedral-arena, the bichon fiise went bobbing through the crowd in the arms of the owner she hardly knew and whom she was thinking of biting this very minute. A little animal, originally from the island of Tenerife, a darling of the courts, a breed that had led quite a happy life chasing little wooden balls and standing on front paws to the de
light of royalty, only to be thrown rudely into the streets and sent rolling along the blood-drenched gutters with the heads of the courtesans. But the bichon frise had endured. Three hundred years of grit and determination had come down to a search for a Tampax.

  Philo Skinner was beginning to wonder. Would it be worth it all down there in Puerto Vallarta? On white sand, under white sun, in white-on-white linen suits? With brown girls, white in the tooth?

  With Philo's brown fingers and blackened lungs. He coughed up a frightening gob of phlegm and spit it in a handkerchief which made Pattie Mae want to vomit. Oh, gross! Mr. Skinner, you make me sick! And you think you can frick me? I'd rather be gangbanged by a pack of Dobermans! Oh, barf!

  Then the female voice over the public address system, a voice which was to become familiar and incessant the entire day: "Janitor, ring four. Janitor, ring six. Janitor ..."

  Bring your pooper-scoopers, boys. The dogs are covering the red carpet in a sea of shit. "Janitor, ring ten. Janitor

  Then a crowd of milling bystanders started screaming, and two people were knocked to the floor. A bull mastiff had suddenly gone insane with lust and leaped over his exercise pen, flattening a tiny Norwich terrier bitch. Lunging for all he was worth, the mastiff's huge pink erection overshot the target by a good eight inches. Two groomers were trying to rescue the Norwich, who was doing her damnedest to lift up high enough so the mastiff could get a better angle. If the hot little Norwich could have stood on a box she would have.

  "Get that mastiff!" a handler screamed.

  "It's not my mastiff! It's your slutty Norwich!" a groomer cried.

  "If that brute hurts my little bitch . . . !" an exhibitor warned.

  A matronly dog owner was strolling through with a white toy poodle, minding her own business, when the lust-crazed bull mastiff reacted after the sexy little Norwich was dragged away. He leaped on the woman and began humping her leg for all he was worth while she screamed and threw the fluffy poodle in the air like a soccer ball.

  "Get the mastiff!" voices cried.

  "Catch the poodle!" other voices cried.

  "Knee him in the chest!" a voice from the grandstand advised.

  "It always works on my husband!" another promised.

  And now the whole west end of the grandstand was having a great time watching the frenzied mob battling the sex-mad mastiff. The woman was down on her back now amid a crowd of handlers wrestling the slobbering brute.

  "Don't knee him with both knees now, dearie," a hot dog salesman giggled. "Or your next baby might look like J. Edgar Hoover."

  The exhausted mastiff finally surrendered to his handler, who carried him out of the arena. This i8o-pound champion would live to battle another day, but for now his eyes rolled and tongue lolled and he was carried in the arms of his panting, sweaty handler. The unsheathed pink erection draped futilely over his stomach made Philo Skinner shake his head and sympathize.

  "I Know how you feel, pal," Philo clucked.

  Is it always this exciting around here, Mr. Skinner?" Pattie Mae asked, blowing dry the Kerry, while Philo looked at his watch and lit another cigarette with the butt of the last.

  "Taper the chest hair like I showed you. Damn it, Pattie Mae! You don't want a skirt on a goddamn Kerry blue!"

  "Yes, Mr. Skinner."

  At 10:00 a. M. Philo Skinner realized he would have to have his mind sufficiently under control to show his first dog in just thirty minutes.

  At 10:30, Pattie Mae, her eyes bright with excitement said, "Mr. Skinner, you wanna bait the Kerry with a toy or a ball or some liver?"

  "Liver," Philo said, snuffing a cigarette. "This Kerry always works best with liver. Wait a minute, I almost forgot. Check his teeth. That dumbass broad can't resist giving him chocolate cherries everytime she puts one in her own fat mouth."

  "Yes, Mr. Skinner," Pattie Mae said, getting the tooth scaler, glancing at Philo from time to time, watching him wipe his sweaty hands on a handkerchief. Unbelievable! Like this was his first dog show!

  Philo showed the Kerry like a sleepwalker. He'd always said he could do it in his sleep and he proved it.

  "I guess you should always fold the excess lead, huh, Mr. Skinner?" Pattie Mae said as he adjusted his necktie, letting the Kerry smell the liver, preparing to queue up for the show ring.

  "Huh?" The voices and sounds of the dog show were a roar in the ears of Philo Skinner. He wiped his forehead and hands again.

  "I said, you always fold the excess show lead ..."

  "Yes yes yes. Fold the lead in your left hand, yes."

  "By the way, Mr. Skinner, I was wondering, where did the schnauzer come from? Is it a new one of ours?" "What?"

  "The schnauzer bitch."

  'The schnauzer bitch?"

  "That one!" the girl said impatiently, pointing to Tutu, lying unhappily in a crate, looking hopefully at the love of her life, Philo Skinner.

  "Oh, that schnauzer. Yes, I have a new client. Talked me into . . . into showing the bitch today, but she's not ready, just not ready."

  "She's a gorgeous-looking bitch, Mr. Skinner. One of the best I ever seen. What's wrong? Can't she work properly? Gosh, her coat is perfect and ..."

  "Not ready, she's just not ready," Philo blurted. Then he lit his last cigarette before going in the ring. Jesus, this kid! He had to have some kind of plausible story for her. He had overlooked the fact that he'd have someone with him today. It was all so strange, like a dream, this crime business. As though there'd be no one but himself and the schnauzer and the target!

  "Pattie Mae," Philo began thoughtfully, "sometimes you have to show fifteen dogs in a day. Sometimes overlapping occurs and you can't be in two rings at the same time. You could actually have to miss showing in one of the rings, and that client, that rich client could be sitting up there in the goddamn seats crying in her hankie and threatening to sue, or something. So today, since this is my last . . . since this is your first dog show I'm not showing many dogs so I brought along that schnauzer bitch as a favor to . . . it's time to go into the ring!"

  "Yes, Mr. Skinner," the girl said quietly, looking into Philo's dilated eyes. "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Always remember, Pattie Mae, you communicate with your fingers through the lead. You've got to have great fingers!" He said it as though he were going away and never coming back. "You've got to have great fingers!"

  Philo almost panicked for a moment. He couldn't find the huge yellow sign with the red ring number. It was right in front of his face. He almost tripped over a Kerry blue. There was a long file of Kerry blues, yet for a moment he couldn't find the ring! He had to stop and commit a breach of etiquette. He had to smoke one last cigarette just seconds before going in.

  A handler he'd never seen before turned and said loftily: "My bitch sneezes from cigarette smoke. Put it out, if you please!"

  Philo Skinner had never had a fistfight in his entire life. Philo Skinner was so racked with asthma and incipient emphysema that even Pattie Mae could have beaten him up. Yet he suddenly shocked himself by stepping nose to nose with the other tall handler and saying, "Listen, buddy, if your bitch doesn't like cigarette smoke, then switch to cigars and divorce the cunt!"

  Then Philo bumped past the florid handler and was in the ring. Out of the way, you creep! You fag! The best go in the ring first. The greenhorns go in last. Out of the fucking way for Philo Skinner, Terrier King!

  Then he just toughed it out on instinct. He could hardly hear the applause of the terrier crowd. He concentrated on the Kerry. He wasn't aggressive enough. Maybe if he would growl a little. Christ, the dog was getting old. He had a good steely blue color, though. Where the fuck was Pattie Mae? Keep your goddamn hands off Tutu, you dumb little fucking hippie. Oh, shit, he wasn't even letting the Kerry set its own pace as they walked counterclockwise around the ring. Oh, shit! He was making the dog move too fast. Another prayer in the dog cathedral. Philo looked up at the steel-beamed ceiling: Let me get through this day and I'll never place another b
et! Except maybe on jai alai if they have it in Puerto Val- larta. Do they bet on bullfights?

  Pattie Mae meanwhile was fascinated by the miniature schnauzer, and Tutu was dying to get out of the cage and into an exercise pen. She was growling, wagging, hopping around her cage so much she bumped her head.

  "Oh, poor thing!" Pattie Mae cried, opening the cage door. "Poor thing. You hurt your little head." And the girl scooped Tutu up into her aims and cuddled her against her face. "You're the prettiest schnauzer I ever seen!"

  Then she put Tutu into an exercise pen and gave her a piece of liver which Tutu gobbled gratefully.

  The milling throngs of people on the floor of the Sports Arena began flowing toward the food concessions as the morning wore on toward the lunch hour. Philo Skinner was in the ring doing the individual gaiting, "straight-down-and- back." He gaited the dog on his right to correct a slight tendency toward sidewinding. Then he gave an almost imperceptible tug on the lead to bring the head in from the outward line of travel. Even in a state of terror and panic, Philo Skinner was still a dog man.

  When the judge trooped the line behind the terrier, Philo, never one to overhandle, reached down and ran his hand over die hindquarter subtly, ever subtly, because this Kerry showed very fine from behind. He noticed that the female handler on the left was staring at the judge. Dumb bitch, he thought. Bad form. Never stare at the judge even if you do have tits like searchlights.

  Philo baited the dog subtly with the liver and the dog struck a noble pose. Goddamnit, he was going to get hold of himself and go out with a win.

  Yet Philo was hardly aware of the burst of applause when his Kerry was named winner's dog, thereby moving closer to his owner's dream of best of breed, for which Philo was promised a $200 bonus.

  Two hundred bucks. Best of breed. Shove it, Philo Skinner won't be needing it.